FEATURED ARTICLES ABOUT OAKLAND COUNTY - PAGE 2

Brilliant red begonias flared on the front porch of the tidy white house on a quiet street in Clawson on a splendid spring morning. Inside, Susan Williams lay dead, a gas mask over her face, a canister of carbon monoxide tied to her bed, and Jack Kevorkian, who is awaiting a murder trial for helping two other women die last fall, nearby. Williams` painful life, and a losing 12-year battle with multiple sclerosis, ended Friday at age 52. Her death deepened the raging controversy over assisted suicide and the role of Kevorkian, the retired pathologist from Royal Oak, Mich.

The nationally televised death of a Michigan man at the hands of Dr. Jack Kevorkian appeared to be illegal, the prosecuting attorney said Monday, but a decision on whether to prosecute Kevorkian could not rest on televised excerpts of the videotapes. The excerpts of the videotapes were shown Sunday night on the CBS News show "60 Minutes" and helped boost the show's ratings on the important last weekend of the November "sweeps," when audiences are measured to set advertising rates.

(Reuters) - A Michigan man was sentenced to 18 to 40 years in prison for a three-day firing spree in 2012 on an interstate highway that earned him the nickname the "I-96 shooter," prosecutors said on Monday. A Livingston County jury on January 29 found Raulie Casteel, 44, guilty of terrorism, assault with a dangerous weapon, firing a weapon from a vehicle and other felony weapons charges. He faced up to life in prison for the attacks. No one was injured, but the threat of being fired upon sent chills through motorists.

When an Oakland County, Mich., jury last Friday found Dr. Jack Kevorkian guilty of murder, justice was done. That's a fact, regardless of whether one supports an individual's right to assisted suicide and whether one thinks euthanasia should be legalized. Because assisted suicide and euthanasia weren't on trial; Jack Kevorkian was. After helping at least 130 people kill themselves in the last decade, after three acquittals and one mistrial on charges of assisting suicides, the man described as "Dr. Death" stepped over the line that separates morally ambiguous behavior from murder.

By Joseph Lichterman OAKLAND TOWNSHIP, Mich., June 17 (Reuters) - The latest search for former Teamsters boss Jimmy Hoffa, who disappeared in 1975 in what law enforcement officials believe might have been an organized crime hit, brought investigators on Monday to an overgrown vacant field in suburban Detroit. A bulldozer drove onto the property and video shot from a helicopter by Detroit television station WDIV showed FBI agents with shovels digging at the ground in a bid to find the remains of the union leader, whose dramatic life story inspired the 1992 movie "Hoffa," starring Jack Nicholson.

A judge sentenced right-to-die advocate Dr. Jack Kevorkian to 10 to 25 years in prison on Tuesday for the nationally televised death of a terminally ill Michigan man. Oakland County Judge Jessica Cooper followed the recommendations of prosecutors and issued Kevorkian a stiff sentence but stopped short of handing down the maximum of life in prison for second-degree murder. Cooper dismissed tearful pleas for leniency from the widow and brother of 52-year-old Thomas Youk, who died in September after Kevorkian administered a lethal injection.

By Joseph Lichterman OAKLAND TOWNSHIP, Mich., June 18 (Reuters) - FBI agents will resume searching an overgrown field in suburban Detroit on Tuesday for former Teamsters boss Jimmy Hoffa, who disappeared nearly 38 years ago and is thought to have been murdered by members of organized crime. A backhoe was driven onto the property, not far from where Hoffa was last seen alive, on Monday and video recorded from a helicopter by Detroit television station WDIV showed FBI agents digging for the union leader's remains.

Janet Adkins pushed a button in Michigan last week and profoundly changed the national debate over the right of the terminally ill to end their lives. At a time when courts and state legislatures across the country are still grappling with the ethical and legal questions raised by withholding food and water supplied through a tube, Adkins chose to commit suicide with the help of a device put together by a retired pathologist. The suicide has ignited a controversy that some fear may blur the line doctors and medical ethicists thought had been drawn between ending life-sustaining treatment and allowing doctor-assisted euthanasia.

Janet Adkins was an English teacher who no longer could spell. She was a piano player who no longer could read music. Everything of value to the 54-year-old Portland, Ore., wife and mother slowly was ebbing because of Alzheimer's disease. After a last-ditch attempt at an experimental drug treatment failed last autumn, she decided to commit suicide. On Monday, Adkins took her life with the help of a retired Michigan pathologist who invented a device enabling patients to push a button to start a flow of lethal chemicals into the body.

Dr. Jack Kevorkian got what he wanted Tuesday: a felony charge that will take him into the courts to challenge Michigan's 6-month-old law against physician-assisted suicides. "This is not a matter of law, legislators, ethicists, theologians or philosophers. It's a medical matter," Kevorkian said after being released on $100,000 bond by a Wayne County magistrate. He repeated his appeal to the medical profession to oppose laws such as Michigan's and to establish guidelines for treating assisted suicides like any other medical procedure.